


Quantum Immorality

by PaperKatla



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: ADHD Character, Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bullying, Canon Temporary Character Death, Drug use in this case is a misuse of ritalin, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-05 01:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14033478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperKatla/pseuds/PaperKatla
Summary: Cisco squeezed the Monster Spray 2000 bottle tighter, the plastic buckling under his grip. He could feel the tears dripping down his nose, taste the salt on his lips. The man who was not Dr. Wells raised his arm above his head, his hand vibrating until it was nothing but a blur. “Do you how difficult it’s been to keep this from you--from all of you, but especially, especially you?”---Eobard Thawne was playing the long game. Wearing the face of Harrison Wells, he takes a young Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco under his wing, molding them as he needs them. There are only three things they need to know: They protect each other. They don't need anyone else. They keep to the plan.(the rewrite of "Refraction" that you never asked for)





	1. Chapter 1

Cisco clutched the Monster Spray 2000 tightly to his chest to stop his hands from shaking. The green plastic spray bottle had once been an apple-scented children’s hair detangler bottle, but had been relabeled with an MS Paint-created design years earlier by Caitlin. It was filled with water, but the contents never mattered, it was the label that made it believable. Cisco wanted so badly to believe in it now. He could hear the water slosh inside it, still half full, and he tried to convince himself that if he just had the nerve to hold it out, to spray it at the man in front of him, then the monsters would melt away.

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t catch his breath, it was getting stuck somewhere behind his chest, as he stood, hunched over and still, in the center of STAR Labs’ basement. He could hear the hum of the trap they’d built for the Reverse Flash behind him, but he didn’t turn around to shut it off. He wanted Caitlin. He wanted her to be standing next to him, maybe holding his hand, or firmly prying the Monster Spray 2000 out of his hands to spritz away all the monsters. He wanted Barry, to come rushing in, hero that he was, and save the day. He could take the ribbing about being the damsel in distress. It was a stupid thought--he didn’t _really_ want them there. He didn’t want them to see him, standing in the basement of STAR Labs, trembling like a leaf and crying. He just didn’t want to be alone with only a detangler bottle full of water to defend himself with.

Dr. Wells circled him like a predator. Cisco followed him with his eyes as long as he could, too scared to move. “Please,” he started to say, but stopped. What was he supposed to say? He had his answers already. Dr. Harrison Wells was not Harrison Wells at all, but some man named Eobard Thawne--a man who had murdered Nora Allen, and now wanted to murder Barry. “Please, I can help you,” he begged.

The man smiled. “Oh, Cisco,” he said. “You’re smart, but you’re not that smart.” Cisco squeezed the Monster Spray 2000 bottle tighter, the plastic buckling under his grip. He could feel the tears dripping down his nose, taste the salt on his lips. The man who was not Dr. Wells raised his arm above his head, his hand vibrating until it was nothing but a blur. “Do you how difficult it’s been to keep this from you--from all of you, but especially, _especially_ you?” Cisco drew a wet, snuffling breath. “I love you, son.”

Cisco sobbed. The plastic bottle cracked loudly in his hands. “Please. Please, don’t.”

Not-Wells’ vibrating hand punched through Cisco’s chest like a hot knife through butter. He felt the give of his flesh, had the brief sensation that he could feel his heart _shredding_ , and then--nothing.

\---

Dr. Wells had been a big believer in educational toys, but there was nothing really educational about the plastic _Star Wars_ Give-a-Show projector--still in its original box--that had appeared in Cisco’s room on his eighth birthday. He had rushed out to the kitchen, wild with excitement, and immediately slipped. His stocking feet sailed out from under him, and his elbow struck the island’s marble countertop as he fell. His head hit the stone floor, and he blinked owlishly, eyes watering.

Caitlin leapt out of her chair, dropping to her knees next to him on the cold kitchen floor. Her face was blurry, but Cisco knew it was just because he was crying. He was being a baby, but he couldn’t help it--his elbow really hurt! Dr. Wells appeared next to Caitlin, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “Cisco, are you all right?” Cisco sniffled, reaching out his arms until Dr. Wells pulled him up and into his lap with a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, you’re okay. Did you bonk your head?”

“And my elbow,” Cisco replied. “I think it’s broken.”

“You’d know if it was broken,” Caitlin said with all the sage wisdom that twelve years provided. “That’s what you get for running in the house.”

“All right, let’s not put salt in the wound, Caitlin,” Dr. Wells admonished.

“Yeah, _Caitlin_!”

“Hush,” said Dr. Wells to Cisco. To Caitlin he said: “I think he’s learned his lesson.” He put his hand around the back of Cisco’s thick head of loose curls. “There’ll be a bit of a goose egg, but I think it should be fine. Are you feeling dizzy, Cisco? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three, but you got one behind your back,” he replied.

“Good observing,” Wells said. Cisco beamed. “Well, I think you’ll live. That elbow is going to make a very pretty bruise, but I doubt we’ll need to amputate.” Dr. Wells shifted just Cisco enough to be able to stand up and heave Cisco into his arms with a dramatic groan. “Oh, you’re getting too big for this!” They grinned at each other. “Happy birthday, son.”

“Happy birthday, Pops!”

“That’s not how birthdays work,” Caitlin said.

“Pops says my mind is a gift, so I’m giving you all my mind as a birthday present,” he said. “Happy birthday!”

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “You’re so weird.”

Dr. Wells, for his part, was laughing to himself, his focus back on breakfast.

Someone had asked Cisco once what it was like having Dr. Harrison Wells for a father. It had been early on, after the adoption papers had gone through for both him and Caitlin, after the hours of social worker visits and the strange questions they asked about his relationship to Dr. Wells--did he touch them? Was he ever inappropriate? Was Cisco ever scared of him? How did Cisco feel about living with Dr. Wells? The question, like all the questions before, had seemed baffling. Dr. Wells was just a father--a regular father, slightly strict and a bit austere, but encouraging of his interests and endlessly supportive. The fact that he was also a public figure wasn’t _like_ anything. He still told Cisco to eat his vegetables, to do his history homework, to not have tantrums in grocery stores, and to “Stop reading! Go to bed already!” Sure, he had more money and a nicer house than some people but, to Cisco, it quickly became normal.

The headlines and tabloids, though, lapped up the story of the lonely scientist, still mourning the loss of his beloved fiancée, adopting children. He spoke in interviews about Tess and him having talked about children, about this just being one more way for him to honor her memory and live a more complete, fulfilled life.

Cisco and Caitlin both hated the articles that were printed about them. The newspapers printed stories painting them as sad, Dickensian orphans who had been thrown away by their parents and society. They highlighted the struggles of Cisco’s immigrant parents, and Caitlin’s dead father. The fact that Caitlin still had a biological mom and Cisco’s parents were both comfortably middle class, despite their recent divorce and his father moving back to Puerto Rico, was rarely recorded. “They make it sound like you were being shoved down chimneys!” Caitlin scoffed.

“Dante dared me to try and climb up the gutter once,” Cisco replied.

“That’s not the same thing, and you know it.”

It wasn’t, but he wasn’t entirely sure what Caitlin was so upset about. He figured it out much later, after years of fighting his way to the top of the class in the half dozen private schools he and Caitlin would inevitably filter through in the years to come. People had opinions about single parents, immigrants, career women, and who deserved what.

But, that morning, on Cisco’s eighth birthday, none of that mattered. On that morning, Dr. Wells--his Pops--tucked him against his hip even though he was getting too big, and made him French toast and cheesy eggs for breakfast. At lunch, he took Caitlin and him to see _The Road to El Dorado_ , and, at night, they beat the sugary guts out of an unsuspecting grocery store pinata and ate cake and ice cream for dinner. On that day, Cisco had his Pops and his sister and a _Star Wars_ Give-a-Show projector and a belly full of sugar. On that day, he fell asleep having completely forgot about his bruised elbow.

\---

Cisco woke up in an ambulance after the particle accelerator explosion, still wearing the hideous tie Caitlin had forced him to wear for the press conference. It was the only tie he owned--purchased for his university graduation and quickly forgotten in the back of his closet afterwards. He hated it. It was strangling him, he was sure of it. His arms were pinned to his side, strapped tightly to the gurney, and he couldn’t pull one loose. He just wanted the damn tie off!

“Hey, it’s okay,” said a voice. He blinked up at a young EMT, suddenly realizing that he’d lost a contact in all the chaos. “Hey, we need you to stay still. You got a concussion.”

Cisco scoffed, and yanked his shoulder back harder, desperate to free himself. He was choking. Couldn’t they see? The tie was garroting him, twisting tighter and tighter around his neck. He wheezed, pulling in a mangled breath. An oxygen mask slipped over his mouth and nose, while someone else encouraged him to calm down, just breath, that it was all fine.

He blinked.

He wanted Caitlin. He wanted her to be sitting next to him, maybe holding his hand. It was a selfish thought, though. They had been together when the explosion occurred, their heads pressed together as they clutched the walkie-talkie tightly in a shared grip. Caitlin had sobbed, pleading with her fiance to find another solution, to dare to find a way to open the door to the pipeline and join them on the other side. He hadn’t. The force of the blast hit them both square in the chest, throwing them back twenty, thirty feet. The walkie-talkie had flown out of their grip. Lying on the floor, the blaring alarms sounding distant and muffled under the ringing in his ears, he had watched the walkie-talkie smash against a wall and skid across the floor, out of reach of Caitlin’s outstretched arm. He’d passed out watching Caitlin cry.

“My sister,” he said. His voice sounded strange, slurred. “My sister. I want my sister.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” the EMT said. “She’s probably waiting for you at the hospital already.”

“No, no,” he said. “No, I want my sister.” He tried to sit up again, but the gurney’s straps held him firmly in place. “Caitlin! Caitlin!”

“Patient’s getting agitated,” announced one EMT.

“Lorazepam,” suggested the other.

The needle glinted menacingly as it was slipped into an IV Cisco had failed to noticed before. He glared at the EMT as his eyes slipped closed.

\---

“Happy twenty-first birthday, Cisco,” Iris said, holding out a cupcake with a single sparkling candle.

Cisco groaned. This was not how he wanted to spend his twenty-first. Groaning, he pushed himself up onto his elbows. The IV on the back of his hand tugged a bit as he shifted; Cisco hissed. Caitlin leapt to her feet, silently arranging the tubes and wires so nothing pulled or came loose, and helped him ease into a sitting position on the bed. “Thanks,” he said. He smiled at her and she she gave a weak, watery smile back.

Iris approached the bed, holding out the cupcake. “Make a wish and blow it out before Nurse Rachet at the nurses’ station over there sees,” she hissed. He laughed and blew out the candle. Iris set the cupcake on the nightstand and heaved herself on the end of the bed. He could feel his foot resting against her hip. She patted his ankle warmly. “How you doing, buddy?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Liar,” Iris replied.

He huffed out a small laugh. She was right, of course. His body ached. Even with Caitlin to keep him company, he was going stir crazy. Caitlin had been admitted to the same hospital as he was, but had been quickly released after one night. One side of her face was a nasty purple-yellow bruise, and the stitches along her hairline stood out sharply against her pale skin, but she had very few post-concussive symptoms. He, on the other hand, still had an irritating amount of tinnitus that was taking its sweet damn time in fading, and had experienced at least one noticeable seizure. While his scans showed nothing to suggest any brain injury, the hospital had insisted him staying under observation for a few more days.

Caitlin had stayed in his room every night, sometimes nudging him in the middle of the night as she crawled onto the hospital bed to sleep next to her brother. He felt her cry, even when she wasn’t making noise. He felt her mourn, until her shoulders shook, until the bed rattled with the noise she was trying desperately not to make. He had tried to encourage her to leave, to visit their father, to visit Barry, and sometimes she did, but mostly she stayed with him.

Cisco picked at the cupcake. Desperate for a change of topic, he asked, “How’s Barry?”

“He still hasn’t woken up,” Iris replied.

\---

Cisco sat on his new bed, heels tucked up under him, chewing on a piece of birthday taffy from the week before, and bent down over one of the picture books that Pops had bought him when he’d first moved in. He liked this book in particular because it was simple and the orange-tinted illustrations were nice to look at. He liked the little boy’s hat in the picture, but had gone in himself with crayon and drawn a propeller on it. He was pretty sure that those kinds of hats came with propellers, and he planned to invent a hat one day that you could actually use to fly around in.

On the nightstand next to his bed, the Give-a-Show projector was on and projecting the dim image of a cartoon X-wing was projected on the opposite wall. The new boy--his new brother, Barry--was sitting on Cisco’s old bed on the other side of his room, looking a bit lost and out of place. He was staring at the cartoon X-wing, or maybe staring past it somehow, like he was looking at something a very long ways away.

“Now, Barry has had a terrible thing happen,” Pops had explained to Caitlin and Cisco over dinner a few days before. Cisco remembered it pretty well because it had been Friday night, which meant he was allowed to have dessert first, if he wanted. And he always wanted. Pops hadn’t been as interested in the cake as Caitlin and Cisco were, though. He seemed tense, focused. “I want you two to be nice to him, but also patient. He’s had a lot of changes. I know I can trust you two to treat him like another sibling—like you treat each other.”

Cisco would learn later that the “changes” Dr. Wells referred to included the murder of Nora Allen, followed by a custody battle as Dr. Wells fought for the right to adopt Barry, instead of allowing him to remain in foster care at the Wests’ house. Cisco never learned the details of what went on in court, only that, later, when Joe brought Iris to visit he rarely spoke to Dr. Wells.

“Of course we’ll be good,” Caitlin had replied. “We’ll give him a really nice welcome. I can make cookies.”

“Is he an older brother, or a younger brother?” Cisco had asked, helping himself to a huge spoonful of rice. He was pretty sure that being the older sibling was the better deal. While he got lot more attention from Pops than he ever did from his own parents, Caitlin was still an older sibling and that meant that she got to do things that Cisco wasn’t allowed to yet--like watch scary movies and stay up past eight-thirty on a school night.

“He’s your older brother,” Pops had replied.

“Awww,” Cisco whined. “I wanted to be the big brother.”

On cue, as always, Caitlin leaned in and whispered, “Being the baby is the better deal—you can get away with everything.”

Cisco had looked up, wide-eyed and excited. “Is that true, Pops?”

“No,” Dr. Wells assured him. “It’s not.”

Cisco looked over at Barry, curled up in bed in his pajamas and pouting. Cisco was pretty certain Barry was probably an all right kid, but he was clearly very sad. He was taller than Cisco, with long, thin legs. He had growing pains--Cisco could hear him groaning and clutching his legs when he thought no one was paying attention. The entire day, though, he had remained stubbornly silent. The social worker had talked to him, quietly, in the sunny parlor that no one in the house used because there were sunnier parlors, but he hadn’t stopped sulking. He refused Caitlin’s cookies and, once shown his half of the he and Cisco’s shared room, had stayed stubbornly on the bed until Pops had come in and told them to get ready for bed. Cisco could tell Barry was sleepy because his eyes were drooping, even though there was still a half hour left before bedtime. “Do you wanna go to sleep, Barry?” Cisco asked. “It’s okay if you do, because I have a flashlight, so I can just read under the covers. Here, I’ll get the light--”

“No!” Barry said, leaping into Cisco’s path. He paused, shifting awkwardly. Both boys stared at each other in silence. Barry towered over Cisco, but Cisco couldn’t help but feel like he was way more grown-up than Barry in that moment. His new big brother shifted from foot to foot, fiddling awkwardly with the hole in the pocket of his bathrobe. He seemed small and scared when he mumbled, “Uh, um. I mean, it’s fine. You can leave the light on.”

“Are--are you scared of the dark?”

Barry glared. “No!”

“No, no,” Cisco said, trying to sound like he didn’t think it was kind of funny that an older boy was scared of the dark. “It’s fine. I used to be scared of the dark, too, but Caitlin fixed it for me.”

“Fixed it?”

Eagerly Cisco nodded, tugging Barry back onto his bed, and pointing up at the ceiling. “Caitlin and I scraped all the popcorn up on the ceiling and painted the Andromeda galaxy on it instead. We used glow in the dark paint so you can see it when the lights go out,” he explained. “Plus, I have Monster Spray 2000.”

Barry looked incredulous. “Monster Spray?”

“2000!” Cisco said. He rushed to his nightstand and pulled out the bottle. “You sit on your bed--see, like this--and when you think you see a monster in the dark, you shoot him with the spray and it disintegrates them. I only have one bottle, but we can share, if you want.”

Slowly, Barry nodded.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ll give it to you, Barry,” Cisco said, sighing. “You always could sleep like the dead.”

Across the room, Caitlin glared at him. “That’s not funny, Cisco.”

He sighed again, ignoring her in favor of toying with the Monster Spray 2000 bottle he’d brought in for the night shift. It wasn’t like he really needed it--he wasn’t a little kid anymore. There were no monsters. Watching Barry at night, though, was different. Logically, he knew that Caitlin had walked him through exactly what to do in case something went wrong and she and Dr. Wells were just a phone call away, but it still made him nervous to watch the Cortex grow darker and to be left alone to the soft beeps of the machines they’d hooked Barry up to. So, when he’d been going through his things looking for something to do during the long hours of waiting for Barry to wake up, he’d found the Monster Spray again and it felt strangely comforting to have it nearby. He filled it with water from the break room sink and would casually shoot at the shadows with it, making small ‘pew! pew!’ sounds.

“He’s gonna wake up,” Caitlin said.

Now, it was Cisco’s turn to glare. “I know. He was always really good at sleeping. I’m not worried.”

It was a complete lie. Cisco was worried.

“We should put on some music,” Cisco suggested, poking at Barry’s hand with his licorice stick. “He likes Gaga.”

Caitlin scoffed. “He does not.”

“He does! He told me!”

“When?”

“Like, the week before when I stopped by CCPD,” Cisco argued. “It was playing in his lab!”

“Sounds like a fish story,” Caitlin said.

“You’re a fish story!” he snapped childishly back.

Barry sprung awake, lurching upward with a ridiculously long gasp. His arms flailed and his head swiveled around frantically. Monitors went haywire. Cisco jumped. Caitlin screamed in surprise. Cisco leapt towards the comm mic, calling frantically for Dr. Wells. “What happened?” Barry wheezed. “Where am I? How did I get here?” His voice sounded scratchy from months of disuse. He tried to bat at Caitlin as she waved a penlight in his eyes. “Ow, Caitlin, stop! You’re gonna blind me!”

Cisco rolled his eyes. Leave it to Barry to manage to be dramatic about something as simple as waking up, he thought. He forced himself to stroll casually into the middle of Caitlin and Barry wrestling over the penlight and snatched it away from them. Caitlin immediately protested, spitting out threats of switching his toothbrush with the one they used to clean the sinks as she jumped to try and reach the penlight. “In a minute!” he argued. “Give the guy a break.”

“He’s disoriented!” she argued. “You heard him: he doesn’t know where he is.”

“You’d be disoriented, too, after a nine-month nap!”

“Nine months?!” Caitlin and Cisco snapped their attention back to their patient who was now stumbling his way out of bed. “What do you mean nine months?” There was a pause, as Barry looked down at his own crotch. “Oh my God, why is there a catheter in me? Who put a catheter in me?”

“Don’t look at me, dude, I’m not the one with the medical doctorate,” Cisco said.

Barry’s eyes widened as he looked up at Caitlin. “Oh, please, you don’t have anything I haven’t seen before,” she said, impatiently. At his increasingly upset expression, she added, “Well, it’s not like you can take bathroom breaks in a coma!”

“Coma?” Barry said. “I was in a coma? You said...nine months? I was in a coma for nine months?”

Cisco returned the penlight. “I take it back, check him out. He’s usually not this slow on the uptake.” Gently, he eased Barry back into the stool he’d just vacated. “You were struck by lightning, dude. Which means that, yes, you were in a coma. For nine months.”

Barry put his head in his heads and moaned. “This is ridiculous.”

A soft whir announced Dr. Wells, smiling gently over at Barry from the doorway to the Cortex. “Welcome back, Barry.”

Barry looked up, his eyes widening in shock. “Pops?”

\---

“Where are you going?” Cisco asked, sitting up in bed. He held the Give-a-Show up like a flashlight, the cartoon image of an exploding Alderaan blurring across Barry’s pale features. Barry looked guilty, but his lips were set in a thin, determined line as he held onto the window, one leg already over the sill as he stretched to reach a nearby tree branch. “Are you running away? You can’t run away--it’s a school night!”

“I’m going to see my dad,” Barry said. “No one will let me see my dad.”

Cisco clambered out of bed, tripping on the bed sheets as they twisted around his ankles, and nearly dropping the Give-a-Show. He had snooped in Dr. Wells’ office at the end of the hall once--something that Caitlin and he had been told was strictly off limits--and had discovered the newspaper articles about Barry’s biological dad. The articles painted a grizzly picture, describing in lurid detail how successful surgeon Henry Allen had stabbed and killed his wife in the family’s living room while their son slept upstairs. Cisco had nightmares for weeks after finding the articles--nightmares where Barry stabbed him in their living room, and Cisco bled out on the expensive rug that Cisco wasn’t supposed to track mud on.

“Pops said you can’t see him anymore,” Cisco said.

Barry sneered. “Dr. Wells isn’t my dad! He can’t tell me what to do!” He leaned towards the branch again. “I’m going to the prison to see my dad.”

Lurching forward, Cisco grabbed hold of Barry’s arm. “You can’t run away! It’s dark! There are bad guys--”

“My dad isn’t a bad guy!” Barry snapped, shaking Cisco off. He looked angry, the Give-a-Show’s projection casting his face in shades of devilish orange and dark shadow. “He didn’t kill my mom!”

Cisco shook his head, carefully shifting his feet. He was standing over a stack of Barry’s paranormal books. They were full of sticky notes and notebook paper--Barry’s erratic notes to himself as he tried to piece together what had happened to him the night that his father killed his mother. Because, unlike all the newspapers said, Barry insisted that his father did not kill his mother--that a man in a yellow suit had. Caitlin and Cisco had conferred in private and agreed that Barry was crazy, but that it wouldn’t be very polite to bring it up. Cisco chose a new tactic, as he tugged Barry backwards, trying to coax him away from the window. “You have to stay,” he insisted. “It’s dark. You’ll get in trouble. Pops says we have to take care of each other. We’re family! You’re my brother!” 

“You’re not my brother!” Barry snapped. “We’re not family! Dr. Wells isn’t my dad! I have a dad! He loves me and he wants to see me! At least my dad didn’t move to a different country to get away from me!”

Cisco’s parents’ divorce had been messy and nothing near civil, and while Dr. Wells had made a point to make him feel special and wanted, he hadn’t been able to completely squash the feeling that his mother had agreed too quickly to the adoption. It was his father, though, that left a heavy, sore feeling in Cisco’s chest. His father who had packed his bags on a Sunday night after church, kissed him goodbye with a perfunctory “See you later, mijo” and bought a plane ticket back to his brother’s place in Puerto Rico. There had been no phone calls or birthday cards. From the island of his birth, there’d been silence. A whispered thought took residence in Cisco’s mind, niggling and never completely forgettable: _Maybe he never loved me._

Dropping the Give-a-Show, Cisco screamed. He leapt at Barry, pummeling him with his small fists. Barry grappled for Cisco’s arms, trying to wrestle him away. Both boys felt the way Barry lost his balance at the same time. Cisco flailed, his arm striking Barry’s chest as they both tumbled out of the open bedroom window. He screamed. Barry caught hold of the tree, briefly, his fingers at first gripping and then slipping from the branch, hitting the ground a split second after Cisco. His fall had been more controlled, but he still succeeded in rolling his ankle. Cisco watched him hiss and groan as he lay on the lawn while Cisco’s vision tunneled, his breath coming in shorter, more panicked pants.

Cisco blinked and Caitlin and Dr. Wells were leaning over him. “Cisco!” His name sounded distant and muffled even as Dr. Wells shouted down at him. “No, Cisco! Look at me!” He felt Dr. Wells touch his face, his shoulders, before slipping his hand under him and touching the back of his head. Cisco yelped.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” Barry sobbed somewhere behind them.

Dr. Wells whirled around. “What did you do?” he snapped. He looked angry, angrier than Cisco had ever seen him.

“I said something mean,” Barry wept. “We were fighting. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry?” Dr. Wells raged. “You could have killed him! He’s important! Don’t you understand? He’s as important as you, or Caitlin!”

“Dr. Wells,” Caitlin called, tugging at his arm.

“Do you know what you could have done?” Dr. Wells shouted.

“Pops, please!” Caitlin begged. “Cisco’s hurt!”

Twisting back towards Cisco, Dr. Wells leaned in close, taking Cisco’s small hands in both of his. “It’s going to be okay, son,” he said. He looked up at Caitlin. “Do you know how to start a car?” Caitlin nodded frantically. “Go do it. Barry, go with your sister.” The two rushed to comply, Barry stumbling as he stood up.

Cisco blinked slowly, keeping his eyes on Dr. Wells. He felt the little niggling voice inside his head quiet down. Maybe his biological father didn’t love him, but his Pops did. He knew that by how worried he looked now, bent over Cisco’s tiny frame, stroking floppy black hair. “Shh, I’m here. I’m going to make everything all right,” Dr. Wells whispered. Gently, he slipped his arms underneath Cisco’s shoulders and knees and pulled him close to his body, cradling him, carefully cupping his head. Cisco could feel the tug of something sticky on the back of his head as Dr. Wells shifted his hand in his hair. He was bleeding, bleeding out not on the expensive rug in the living room but in the dark of the backyard. He started to cry.

“Pops…”

“It’s all right,” Dr. Wells whispered. “Nothing is going to change. Everything is going to work out fine. Everything is going to go exactly to plan. Don’t worry.” He slipped Cisco in the back of the van, ordering Barry to keep his head steady. “I need him protected, Barry.”

Solemnly, Barry nodded. “I’ll never let anything hurt him again.”

\---

“Wait up!” Cisco shouted, tugging Caitlin along behind him. He threw himself at Barry, wrapping his arms around Barry’s skinny waist. Behind him, Caitlin wrapped her arms around them both.

“What’s this for?” Barry asked, laughing.

“It’s an awkward sibling hug,” Cisco replied, smooshing his face against his brother’s shoulder. “Accept it.”

“Yeah, we missed you when you were in a coma,” Caitlin added.

They stepped back, surveying each other somewhat awkwardly. Cisco had spent months carefully tending to Barry’s limp body. He’d washed his hair and shaved his beard, and helped Caitlin change the sheets. It had never stopped feeling intimate and wrong, like Cisco was preparing a corpse instead of caring for his brother.

Barry didn’t look like a corpse now. He stood straight and tall in the fluorescent lighting of the Cortex hallway. Caitlin had calmly removed the bandages from Barry’s already healed arm just a few minutes before and had declared him completely healed. At the air field, Cisco had puked up his Big Belly burger at the sight of the limp, disconnected bones, but, now, they appeared good as new. The pale, silent Barry Cisco had spent every other night with for the past nine months was gone, but so was the old Barry--the one who was chronically late, tripped over his feet, slept weird hours, and survived on coffee and the tidbits of bizarro footage he dug up from the depths of his Tor browser searches. Everything was different post-explosion, including their ragtag family.

Barry looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been so distracted by these powers, I haven’t thought a lot about what you guys must have went through--with Ronnie and Pops.”

It had taken Caitlin and Cisco a while to get used to their adoptive father’s new disability, and a few weeks beyond that to retrofit the family home with ramps and stair lifts. Pops had told them that therapy had been declared a relatively pointless endeavor early on, and that they would all have to learn new skills for their new post-explosion lives. Barry hadn’t had the months that they’d had to get used to it, though, and Cisco had watched him force himself not to stare at the wheelchair the entire time they were in the Cortex.

“It’s okay, Barry,” Caitlin said. “We’ve had time. We can talk later.”

“There’s something I wanna talk about now, though,” Cisco said. “About you eating it at the air field. What happened out there?”

Caitlin nodded. “Yeah, what was that? It’s like you lost focus. I didn’t think Barry Allen lost focus. I’ve seen you go without sleep for three days in our college days.”

“To be fair,” Barry replied. “I was taking Cisco’s ritalin back then.”

“Oh, so was I,” Caitlin said. “But my point still stands.”

Barry squirmed in discomfort. “I remembered something,” he said. “About the night my mom was murdered.” Cisco tensed, glancing over at Caitlin. Nora Allen’s murder was rarely discussed, and the man in the yellow suit even less so. While Dr. Wells had never explicitly stated whether or not he thought Barry was crazy or not, he still paid for the therapy sessions and encouraged Barry to try and move on. Barry hadn’t, though, he had continuously investigated the murder, studied forensics, joined CCPD alongside his old foster father, and had vacillated between seeking comfort from Dr. Wells and insisting that Wells was not his father.“The night she was killed, the noise woke me up. When I went downstairs, I saw this ball of lightning with the man in the yellow suit inside. What--what if the man who killed my mom was like me?”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Barry.”

“Yeah, I think I can say with confidence that no one is like you, big brother.” Cisco replied. Smiling, he punched Barry playfully in the arm. “C’mon, Barry Allen--it already sounds like a superhero’s mild-mannered alter ego!”

“Well, unless I can figure out how to stop, I might have to stay the alter ego,” Barry replied.

They laughed.

\---

Barry refused to call Caitlin his sister or Cisco his brother for nearly four months. It wasn’t until Dr. Wells transferred all three of them into the same private school, that things changed.

Lexi LaRoache was a nightmare of a little girl. Her cherubic face and halo of blonde curls meant that, with a sweet smile or a sad look, her innocence was immediately accepted. Her rich but absent parents, however, meant that she had easily secured her spot as queen bee of St. Jerome Emiliani’s sixth grade class. The appearance of Dr. Harrison Wells’ trio of adopted children in the middle of the school year was an unwelcome threat to Lexi. They were new, interesting, with an intriguing rags-to-riches story which almost eclipsed how incredibly bright they were as they quickly usurped her place at the top of the class. It was more than any twelve year old would stand for.

“Why is Cisco even in this class?” she asked one afternoon. “Barry’s almost our age, but Cisco shouldn’t be here. He’s just third grader!”

Caitlin glared. “Cisco earned the right to be here,” she snapped. “He tested in.”

“He’s a baby!” she argued. Wickedly, she looked over at the gaggle of girls clustered behind her. “I heard he still wets the bed. That’s why he goes to the school nurse all the time--he has to change his diapers.”

“That’s not true!” Cisco shouted.

“It’s okay, Cisco,” Barry said, resting a hand on Cisco’s shoulder. “She’s making it up. She’s trying to upset you.”

“She’s jealous,” Caitlin added.

The sweet face soured as Lexi crossed her arms and glared at Caitlin. There was a wide margin of difference between the two girls. Lexi was everything that Caitlin wasn’t, but desperately wanted to be--pretty and skinny and blonde, with clear skin and straight teeth. Puberty had been less kind to Caitlin who was more knees and elbows that anything else, with braces and the beginnings of acne alone her hairline and the place along on her jaw where she consistently rested her hand. Lexi took her in, and scoffed. “Please, I don’t have anything to be jealous about,” she said.

Lexi LaRoache could give Sun Tzu a run for his money. The attacks on the “Wells siblings”, as they were collectively referred to, were almost surgical. She convinced her most easily influenced friends to “accidentally” bump into one during lunch, until it sparked a game amongst the others. The name-calling was easy enough to ignore, at first, until the others seemed to start to believe what they were saying. She would even let a rumor casually slip out amongst her friends, passing it along to the most gossipy, so by the end of the day the entirety of St. Jerome Emiliani knew that Cisco wore diapers, or Caitlin was a dumpster baby, or that Barry’s biological father had murdered 19 people and buried them under their house.

Cisco, Caitlin, and Barry kept to themselves, and refused to rise to the bait.

“We should tell Pops.”

Barry shook his head. “No.”

“No?” echoed Caitlin. Cisco felt her looking at him. He squirmed. He knew he was still smaller than your average eight year old, and definitely much, much smaller than Lexi or any of the other kids surrounding them in the lunch room. He hunched in on himself, shoulders up near his ears as he pointedly ignored two of Lexi’s friends whispering and giggling behind their hands. Their eyes were on him, and when they caught him staring, one of them snapped at him to “Quit staring, Diaper Boy!” Next to him, Cisco felt Caitlin sigh and squeeze his arm. “Barry, I really think we should tell a teacher.”

“No,” Barry said. “We stick together. We need to protect each other, that’s what Dr. Wells always says.”

Nodding, Cisco leaned in. “Pops always says we have to make sure we stick to the plan. We stay safe, we protect each other.”

“What do you boys think we’re going to do?” Caitlin snapped. “Fight her?”

Shaking his head, Barry went back to picking at his lukewarm peas. “I don’t know.”

Cisco suddenly perked up. “No, we don’t need to tell Pops or the teachers, we need to show them.” Grabbing hold of Caitlin’s arm, he shook it with barely contained excitement. “Cait, Barry’s birthday present.”

“My birthday present?” Barry echoed. “The microscope?”

“The microscope with the built-in camera,” Cisco explained.

Caitlin looked at Barry, who looked back at Cisco and grinned. “You’re a genius!”

Cisco preened. “Didn’t skip two grades for nothing!”

They kept the AV Club room dark, for atmosphere. The three of them huddled together under a single overhead light, trying to appear calm yet menacing as Lexi LaRoache stepped into the classroom. She looked around the room in disgust, before crossing her arms over her chest. “What do you nerds want?”

“To show you a movie,” Cisco replied. Calmly, he slipped the VHS into the boxy, black TV that was largely used for showing episodes of _Bill Nye the Science Guy_ when the teachers were all too tired to teach. The VHS tape was the result of three nights of experimental surgery on Barry’s microscope. Cisco was exhausted--he had only slept a few hours the past few nights. Once Dr. Wells had called lights out, he’d snuck back out of bed to work on the camera by Give-a-Show light. He had been surviving on sugary cereal and his ritalin prescription and was near collapsing, but the rush of slipping the tape into the tv was energizing. After all, three nights was pretty impressive for anyone trying to MacGyver a spy camera from a microscope toy, especially for an eight year old. The result of Cisco’s work was a small camera and microphone that fit snugly inside the buttonhole of Barry’s uniform jacket, while the wire and VHS-C recorder was slipped into a pocket he sewed into the lining of the jacket. It was perfect, and had done the job beautifully.

The VHS played grainy footage of Lexi and her friends--knocking into Barry, hissing names at him, confronting the three of them in the hall, during gym, in the lunch room, at recess. Clip after clip after clip.

Lexi looked pale. “Are you gonna tell?”

“That depends…” Cisco said.

“On what?”

“If you take it back or not,” Barry said. “Take back what you said about Cisco wearing diapers, and Caitlin being a dumpster baby, and my dad. Tell everyone the truth. Tell them you lied. And never talk to me, or my sister, or my brother ever again.”

Lexi glared. “Fine. Whatever,” she said, and stormed off.

\---

Barry marched into STAR Labs with his arms full of boxes before anyone had even had a chance to finish their second cup of coffee. He looked tired, steps faltering as Cisco rushed to grab a box before he dropped one.

“Oh my God, where have you been?” Caitlin demanded. “You didn’t come home last night. Dr. Wells was freaking out! He even called Joe--and you can imagine how well that conversation went.”

“I was in Starling City, visiting a friend.”

Cisco followed Barry into one of the labs off the Cortex, dropped the boxes on a dusty countertop. Furious and in full big-sister mode, Caitlin followed. “Starling City? You don’t have any friends in Starling City--we’re siblings, I know everyone you know!” Waving her hands as if to clear the air of any distractions that might have been flying by, she pressed in closer. “And are you telling me you spent the night running from Starling City and back? What if you got lost? Or something went wrong? We don’t know anything about your powers yet. You can barely put on the brakes!”

“I actually got back at about four this morning,” Barry replied. “I’ve been going over unsolved cases from the past nine months. There’s been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people. Your meta-humans have been busy.”

Caitlin deflated. “Oh.”

“Look, I’m not trying to blame you. I know you and Pops didn’t mean for this happen,” he continued. “And, guys, I am so sorry you had to go through all this without me for the past nine months--Ronnie, Pops’ injuries, the shitty press. But Mardon’s still out there--and, like it or not, the particle accelerator gave him his powers. It’s our responsibility to stop him and people like him.”

The three Wells siblings looked at each other. Cisco raised his eyebrows at Caitlin, who raised hers back. “Dr. Wells explicitly stated we weren’t supposed to do this,” she argued weakly.

Cisco scoffed. “Look, if no one else is gonna say it, I’m gonna: I’m a big boy, and Pops can’t tell me what to do anymore.” He stared Caitlin down, arms folded, mirroring her own posture. He felt the excitement burble up inside him, escaping in a smile that he fought to keep controlled. Caitlin smiled back and he resisted punching the air in victory. “Bro,” he said, turning to Barry, “if we’re gonna do this, I gotta show you something.”

Which was how, as Caitlin narrated the changes in weather patterns on her tablet, Barry fumbled into Cisco’s souped-up firefighter suit. “You know what we’re going to be?” Cisco said, bursting with excitement and nervousness. He waited until Barry and Caitlin looked at him, before dropping his voice into an appropriate bass tone. “Big damn heroes.”

Caitlin rolled her eyes. Barry laughed and raced out of the room.


End file.
